Menu

Monthly Archives: November 2010

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!Thanks to God and His miracle of Tylenol PM, I am actually able to include some sentences in this post. 🙂

So, I survived the making of the Southern Living Spice Cake.I survived eating it, too, amazingly, since the ingredient list included

which is not a food friend of mine, as many of you know. What can I say? I love that husband of mine. I would never willingly bake with or consume coconut for another human being.

The citrus filling was super easy– dump and stir. Now that’s my kind of baking.

The icing was less difficult than it sounded, with all the mixing over simmering water and whatnot. But I will say that this was much more easily accomplished with Mary Bullock playing at her Pretty’s house rather than stomping at my feet demanding BUCK BUCK DO IT ALL BY SELF.

So this was the end result:

I wish that I could say that this cake was the best thing I’ve ever tasted, and it was delicious, but between you and me, I’d rather have Buddy Pie any day.

My brain is turning to mush. Whether it’s lack of sleep or late pregnancy preoccupation or whatever–it’s happening.

And my brain wasn’t so firm to begin with, you know? I’m struggling.

So I want to write some things down before they drift off into space never to be retrieved.

Remember when I went to Chicago in September?Mary Bullock does, too. So now whenever we ask where she is going [like when she has her purse around her neck and is strolling her baby doll into the laundry room], she says ‘Cago.Ooooh, that’s a long way, I say. I’ll miss you.Miss you, tooooo, Mama!

or we hear this a lot:Mama, CHOO CHOO TRAIIIIIN!!! Yes! Do you hear the choo choo train?Choo choo train go bye bye, Mama. Well where in the world do you think it’s going?‘Cago.

****Mary Bullock has just realized that the moon is up even during the day. Whenever we are outside, she asks Moon go? Which loosely translates to Where did the moon go? So then we have to spend a few minutes looking upwards to find it in the sky.The other night in the bathtub we were discussing this SUPER THRILLING subject, and how when the sun goes down it gets dark outside.Whycuz? she asks.I don’t know, I say. [Not because I don’t understand that the sun makes light, of course, but because we’ve already had this same discussion several times that day. And the day before. And the day before.]She thinks a minute.Know why? she says.Why? I ask.Don’t know either, she says.

Last night while we were putting her night-nights [pajamas] on, she thrust her round bare belly at my face.Zuhbuht, Mama. [That’s zerbert to the rest of us.]Zerbert? How many do you want? One or two?TWO, she says. She holds up two and half fingers. She has trouble getting that third finger to lay down. I give her two big zerberts on her belly while she squeals.How many do I have left? I ask.TWO, she says. She gets her math skills from me, apparently.But I give her two more zerberts, because what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, right?Thas enough, Mama, she says.

So, after a tearful freak out on the phone to my sister last week, she hopped on a plane and came down here for the weekend to help us get the baby room settled. I cannot even describe how amazing it is to A) have a sister who loves me enough to do this, and B) actually have the room semi-ready. Both of those things have gone a long way towards calming my very anxious mind.

Lee put the finishing touches on the furniture, and we triple-teamed the painting of the walls. By the end of the day on Saturday I was able to start putting the baby’s clothes in drawers and managing the general feeling of chaos that has consumed our house in the last few weeks.

We’re still waiting on some details like window treatments and such, so I’ll wait to show you what it all looks like. But MB seems to love it and has slept in her big girl bed with no problems the last two nights. So I can mark another one off of the worry list [for now]. She is even *knock wood* napping in her bed as I type. This is another HUGE relief.

Nothing will be perfect– not the room, not the timing, and certainly not me, but it’s coming together. And fairly soon [hopefully no sooner than December 10th, dear baby, if you’re listening!] we’ll be a family of four!

I woke up at 4:15 again this morning. I have been waking up early in general, but the time change has thrown my early-but-sane wake up time into the ballpark of the truly ridiculous.

And I’m not kidding about the ridiculous part. Being tired makes me behave very oddly, like when I found our normally super clingy dog lying in our bedroom all by himself this morning and laughed until it almost turned into crying. I’m teetering on the brink here lately. Hormones + little sleep + a to-do list that never gets any shorter= scary laugh-crying.

Anyway. Mary Bullock climbed onto our bed this morning while I was getting dressed. She put her head on the pillow.

Nap Nap, Mama, she said.Light off! I pulled the covers up around her.Mama lay down, tooooo? I climbed in beside her and closed my eyes. I could hear her heavy breathing getting closer to my face.I love that sound. So innocent.She put her hands over my eyelids, and I opened my eyes to her sweet baby face inches away. I had to stop myself from covering her cheeks with kisses.